Meet the Midtown Messenger

Publishing for 24 years, the Hometown News prints six papers that cover Brookhaven, Decatur, Tucker, Norcross, Lilburn and the Ponce corridor. Make that a lucky seven when the Midtown Messen-ger debuts this summer.
Sprawling and vibrant Midtown borders Buckhead to the north, Downtown to the south, heads west to Howell Mill Road and the happening Westside community and nudges Monroe Drive and Virginia-Highland to the east. There is plenty happening in between!

This writer landed his first Atlanta job in Midtown after relocating here in 1987. I was working at Brother Juniper’s restaurant, a beloved breakfast and lunch place at the corner of Peachtree and 11th streets that was run by a religious order. I recall internationally famous drag performer and recording star Ru Paul coming in after gigs at the seedy Weekends nightspot across the street, his six-foot-plus frame draped across two booths as he sipped coffee. Mr. Universe Lee Haney stopped in daily for his regular breakfast of six scrambled egg whites and two plain waffles on the way to his eponymous gym on Ponce. The area still had echoes of “the Strip,” its 1960s and ’70s incarnation of hippies, flophouses and free concerts by the Allman Brothers Band in Piedmont Park. No more.

In 2014, Brother Juniper’s has been supplanted by a posh nightclub, and the strip that housed Weekends is now a hulking Federal Reserve Bank. Mom-and -pop stores have given way to gleaming glass towers. Like Atlanta, Midtown is constantly morphing.

There are stately old neighborhoods like Ansley Park along with up-and-comers such as Home and Berkeley Parks. There is the Atlanta Botanical Garden and the Margaret Mitchell House. The Red Light Café, Center Stage Theatre and Smith’s Olde Bar dish up live roots music and rock, while Churchill Grounds offers jazz. As for restaurants –where to start? Hometown News will be there to cover it all!

As the slogan says: “Midtown is the heart of it all.” And Hometown News is now in the heart of Mid-town!

To advertise in the Midtown Messenger, call 770-938-8506 or 770-493-3003

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